WIVES AND HUSBANDS (19): DYING TO SELF IS WORTH LIVING FOR (Ephesians 5:22-33) President Lyndon B.

Johnson was not exactly known for his wit. But he once got off this great line: Only two things are necessary to keep ones wife happy. The first is to let her think shes having her own way. The second is to let her have it. He might have had a point! We have identified six characteristics of the love of husband for wife from Eph 5:25-33. It is to be Steadfast, Selfless, Sacrificial, Sanctifying, Sympathetic and Sexual. Our primary text for the first three of these is verse 25, Husbands, love (agape) your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Agape is translated love here, but in reality, the English has no exact equivalent. Agape takes love to a level not known in any culture. In America we romanticize love. In our concept we love because of beauty in the beloved and with the hope of being loved. Agape is 180 degrees different. I hope this will become second nature to us. Agape differs from our romantic concept of love in two regards -- 1) it is a decision, not an emotion. And 2) it seeks to give, not to get. Thats what makes it steadfast. Because it is decision and not emotion, it is not subject to the winds of change that sweep through our feelings in love today, out of love tomorrow. Feelings change, but agape is steadfast. Today we are going to look at love as selfless and as sacrificial. Our application is husband for wife, but the same principles apply to Gods command that we all love one another. Dont check out because youre not married. To start, lets talk expectations. One divorce lawyer contends that divorce usually results from romanticized expectations. Jack thinks marriage to Jill will be bliss. He calls her "Angel" and "Sweetie." She can do no wrong. Life is good. Then the wedding bells fade; truth emerges: There are unpleasant moods, weight gains, burned dinners, hair curlers. How did he get into this? He may even conclude that she has deceived him! On the other side, before marriage Jills heart beats a little faster when she thinks of Jack. It will be such happiness to be married to him. Then comes the dirty clothes left lying on the floor, the revelation that sports is not a diversion, but an addiction; the minor but painful insensitivities. The doorknob he promised to fix still comes off in her hand. Jill cries a lot and starts looking up "marriage counselors" in the Yellow Pages.
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Disillusionment. Why? Because the spouse failed? Perhaps. But that is a symptom. The root problem -- unrealistic expectations. The problem is we expect someone else to make us happy. Our romanticized, movie-sanitized view of marriage fosters that expectation. That led us to the altar in the first place. This person is the answer to all my dreams. This person will fill up all the lacks in my life and make me happy. This person is my salvation. When it becomes clear that is not the case, I have two choices. I can settle into mediocrity. Or, I can decide that I got the wrong one and go look for another. Miss Right is out there somewhere; I just have to find her. But the unvarnished truth is there is no Miss or Mr. Right. Doesnt exist. The expectation that someone else can make me happy is bogus. Its bogus. Its a parade that always gets rained on. The place called "Camelot" and the person called "Right" do not exist. That is romance, not Bible. Guys -- a wife can contribute greatly to our lives. But first, we must give up the notion that she is our ticket to happiness. Instead, we have to see that we are her ticket to happiness her salvation. That is selfless, sacrificial love. Love that serves without expectations -- whether wives or the body of X. B. Selfless Where does the concept of selflessness come from? Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Husbands, love. Agape. 1) it is a decision, not an emotion; and 2) it seeks to give and not to get. The second element is where we get selfless. When we take marriage vows, its hard to think beyond the excitement of the moment. The last thing on our mind is the reality that marriage is a means God uses to shape us through conflict and struggle. One writer calls marriage a wild, audacious attempt at an almost impossible degree of cooperation (now, catch this) between two power centers of self-assertion. Did he get it right? If you have been married for any time at all, you know he did. Marriage is a crucible in which two wills must be melted down and purified and made to conform. No one told us this before we got married, did they? And we would not have believed them if they had. But that is the naked truth. Marriage is two wills, each unconsciously striving for supremacy. But that very fact makes it fertile ground for developing the selflessness that God desires. State it another way with those two wills striving for supremacy, husbands, it is critical that our self not emerge as
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the winner. It is also critical that our wife not emerge as victorious. But as leaders in our homes, the monkey is on our back to make the first move to give up self first. Jesus says in Luke 9:48, For he who is least among you all is the one who is great. Mike Mason, in The Mystery of Marriage, says that marriage at its best (and who wants less than the best) is a sort of onedownsmanship contest a backwards tug-of-war between two wills each equally determined not to win. Is that counter-intuitive, or what? But God designed it to work best just that way! And while both parties should always be seeking to win the contest of one-downsmanship (take note, ladies both sides can and must play), the husband should see it as part of his selfless love to make the first move, to invite his wife, by his own example, to engage in this contest. Two wills have to be killed here to get to one united new will. Not very romantic, but infinitely effective! A pastor was addressing a group of preschoolers about being repentant and going to heaven. At the finish, the pastor asked, Where do you want to go? The kids shouted out, Heaven! And what must you do to get to heaven? One little boy in back yelled out. Die! How applicable that is to marriage. Our wills must die to get to heaven in marriage. Selfishness KILLS marriages. Husbands, the hunters, -- we are Gods starting point for killing selfishness. Both partners help, but, guys, it starts with us. This is not easy. It is not. Another thing that people dont tell you about marriage. You must give up some of your ambitions if you want to be part of a Godly marriage. People dont like to hear this. But when you married, you rearranged your priority on your list. You put spouse at the top, or you were not being truthful. You may not have seen that, but spouse went onto the list above career, above causes, above church and ministry above any other earthly commitment. Just below God it now says -- marriage! Many couples fail right there. They cannot stand the waste the fact that marriage demands time that could be devoted to work, or leisure or ambition, or causes even to ministry. But, this simplifies things as well. Marriage is first and foremost about loving one single person above all else and all others spending a lifetime to doing a good, thorough job of loving one person. It seems wasteful because it takes time to love. But that, husbands, is exactly what we signed on for. Selfless love. How are we doing? C. Sacrificial

Okay, the first two characteristics of a husbands love (steadfastness and selflessness) are derived from the meaning of the word love agape. The third is taken from further instruction in verse 25, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Love as Christ loved when he gave himself up for the church. This is the heart of Christs instruction to husbands -- the magic key that unlocks everything else. Love has many elements, but all play off of this instruction. Master this -- the rest basically comes automatically. Love sacrificially, like Christ. Why this instruction? Doesnt love come automatically if you get the right person? So try it out first, says the world. Live together first to see if it works. Then, if you still get it wrong, well, divorce! Thats the ticket. But God knows it is not an issue of getting the right person. It is a matter of changing our own person. We all romanticize seeing our partner as our other half. But you may recall that Mike Mason contends, Secretly what we want is not a mate, but a duplicate of ourselves. His point? We could get the ultimate Mr. or Ms. Right, but wed still kill the marriage by trying to turn them into ourselves! Listen, you know this is true. If you an organized person, what grates on you the most that you try to change in your spouse? You try to get them organized, right? If you are spontaneous, you try your best to increase the spontaneity of your organized spouse, right? If you are never late, you cringe every time your spouse makes you late and do your best to change them. If you love sports, you want your spouse to love sports. If you are an outdoors person, you want you spouse to love camping just like you do. Dear friends, its true! Unconsciously we are trying to change our partner into us. Thats the mold we must break? How? Sacrificial love. Both becoming like Christ! God with full awareness of whats going on under the surface, says, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Two verbs action words -- describe Christs relationship with the church true believers. First, agape He made a conscious decision to act in a kind and loving way toward us. He loved. But true love acts! And so, having loved, He gave himself up. Where? At the cross, Beloved. It always comes back to the cross. He went to the cross because He loved us. That is the ultimate expression of His love. It cost Him everything. He gave himself up. Held nothing back. Did it despite our rejection of Him.

Critical to understand is that Christ went to the cross on purpose. Those who claim the cross was thrust upon Christ unwittingly or unwillingly not only destroy the concept of a substitutionary atonement which is absolutely central to Scripture Ground Zero they also destroy many applications of the cross to daily life. God tells husbands to love their wives and give themselves up for them because thats what He did in Christ. Remove the willing participation of Christ in the atonement make it all an unfortunate act of history and you destroy the imagery and the example. Do we grasp what it means that Christ gave himself for us?! Christ, God in the flesh, gave himself up. Look at John 10:11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Skip down to verse 17, For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. Jesus willingly and purposely allowed himself to be killed in loving obedience to the Father. It is this same love that will willingly sacrifice anything that God is asking us, husbands, to display toward our wives. As Christ went by the way of the cross, so must we. And such giving will not be without pain! A big argument has occurred doesnt matter over what. Who should apologize first? The husband. That is going by the way of the cross. I always have mixed emotions when Patty goes beats me to it. Im glad she apologized, but I wish I had done better. Heres another example. I apologize. Now Im waiting for the apology from the other side. It does not come. Now what? The way of the cross. Leave it with God. Love anyway. I John 3:16-18, By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. (Then he goes on to show that this means action) 17 But if anyone has the worlds goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does Gods love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. Do you see -- it is not an emotion that God is looking for when he says, Husbands love your wives? It is action. He is looking for action. Words are not enough. One woman told her husband, Oh, Harry, you keep saying youd die for me, but you never do! I dont know whether she meant that literally or figuratively! But clearly he was negligent! He had not learned the way of the cross.

The way of the cross requires we put her needs above ours -- live for her by dying to self. Several years ago, Eternity magazine carried a wonderful article by a Karen Howe entitled Husbands, Forget the Heroics! In it she said, "I once heard a Christian minister spend an hour talking on the biblical role of husbands and wives. He spent 59 minutes discussing the woman's need to submit and obey, and one minute summing up the husband's role. It was his grand finale: 'Men, you must love your wives says Christ loves the church. What does that mean?' Dramatic pause. 'It means you must be willing to die for her!' He sat down and colorful images raced through my mind of my husband leaping in front of an oncoming bull or offering himself to cannibals in my stead." However, with pressing daily challenges of schedule juggling, diapers, dishes, sick children, carpools in addition to working full or part time, Howe concluded, "Most women do not want their men to die for them. They want their men to live for them." But living for them requires dying to self. Bryan Chapell in Each for the Other tells how their home centers on an inexpensive wedding gift a plaque. It wasnt much thought of at first, but through many moves, the plaque always surfaced on some wall or bookcase. Other wedding gifts like toasters, blenders, crock pots and such wore out; the plaque survived. It became a constant in their lives and soon its placement came to mean This is now officially a Chapell home. It wasnt the beauty of the plaque that endeared it to them, but its words Home: where each lives for the other, and all live for God. A constant reminder: keep giving and giving and giving and giving. It sums up this passage, and husbands, we are to lead in loving like Christ. Living for the other by dying to self. Guys, we own making sure it is happening. This means in big ways and little. For some of us, our workshop or the golf course is Paradise; entrance to a department store seems like the gates of hell bearing the inscription Abandon hope ye who enter here. But lovers of wives give up Paradise for the fiery gates because we value their interests and love to be with them. A leaky faucet: no big deal to us, but its like water torture to the wife who bears it all day long. He squeezes the toothpaste in the middle; she rolls from the end. Ecah home has its own unique testing grounds! They are all testing grounds. The question -- Will each determine to accommodate the other until it is a contest to see who can give up the most? Who can die the first, the furtherest and the most! Thats the biblical way! But guys, we have the point: dying to self daily for our wives and our Lord. It doesnt matter whether it is how the toilet paper
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rolls, driving speed, programs to watch, taking the trash whatever. The question is, who will die first? Wives, you should never wait, but husbands it should be us! Love means sacrifice. Conclusion Mike Mason describes his own marriage by saying that as a 30-year old man he was like a densely populated city. Nothing new could be put up until something was torn down. And so, he began to be demolished for the sake of the new entity being built. I quoted a few weeks ago his comment that love asks for everything not a little or a lot, but everything. He went on, There is no one who is not broken by this process. It is excruciating and inexorable, and no one can stand up to it. Everyone gets broken, at least a little, on the feel of love, and the breaking that takes place is like nothing else under the sun. No one explains this side of love prior to the marriage, do they? We wouldnt believe it anyway. But heres the thing. While it sounds dreadful spoken of like that, it is the lead-in to something wonderful. Listen, folks, anything worthwhile in this life requires a death of some kind. You dont get crops with the seed dying. You dont achieve athletically without the death of leisure. And death to self is required required, Beloved, to achieve the beauty in our marriage relationship we all desire. But the result can be beyond expectations! Thats where God takes us when we obey. We are faithless, but He is faithful! Let me close with this wonderful illustration. Robertson McQuilkin had been president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary for 22 years when he unexpectedly resigned in March, 1990. Why? Because his wife needed him. Simple. She had developed Alzheimers. He explained further in his letter of resignation: My dear wife, Muriel, has been in failing mental health for about eight years. So far I have been able to carry both her every-growing needs and my leadership responsibilities at CBC. But recently it has become apparent that Muriel is contented most of the time she is with me and almost none of the time I am away from her. It is not just discontent. She is filled with fear even terror that she has lost me and always goes in search of me when I leave home. Then she may be full of anger when she cannot get to me. So it is clear to me that she needs me now, full-time. Perhaps it would help you to understand if I shared with you what I shared at the time of the announcement of my resignation in chapel. The decision was made, in a way, 42 years ago when I promised to care for Muriel in sickness and in health . . . till
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death do us part. So, as I told the students and faculty, as a man of my word, integrity has something to do with it. But so does fairness. She has cared for me fully and sacrificially all these years; if I cared for her for the next 40 years I would not be out of debt. Duty, however, can be grim and stoic. But there is more; I love Muriel. She is a delight to me her childlike dependence and confidence in me, her warm love, occasional flashes of that wit I used to relish so, her happy spirit and tough resilience in the face of her continual distressing frustration. I do not have to care for her, I get to! It is a high honor to care for so wonderful a person. What a story! Someone giving up his career and his ministry to serve one person?! Yes. Yes. We may not have realized this fully when we got married, but in the plan of God thats exactly what we signed on for. By our own attitude and obedience we either make it heaven or hell on earth. So which is it? McQuilkin wrote a book about his experience, A Promise Kept, and in it he mentions how startled he was by the response to his resignation as president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary to care for his wife. Husbands and wives renewed marriage vows. Pastors told his story during sermons. It was all a mystery to him until a distinguished oncologist, who dealt constantly with dying people, told him, Almost all women stand by their men; very few men stand by their women. Love that models Christ is selfless and sacrificial. Rather than expecting someone else to make us happy be our salvation we are seeing how we can be theirs. What a testament that is to our Saviors love for us. Dying to self is something worth living for! And while weve be specifically applying it to marriage today, remember is it the same command that God gives to all believers. Love one another, selflessly, sacrificially. It unleashes the power of God. Lets pray.